Thanks for the post. First, I think it’s important to clarify that UN didn’t say anything: it was David Beasley, director of the World Food Programme—WFP (a branch of UN), who tweeted this “challenge” and later on was interviewed about it; second, his original tweet was about U$ 6.6 bn to prevent 42 million people from starving – only when interviewed he was more emphatic and said “they are literally going to die”. After the CNN interview spread, they changed their original piece, and now the website states that “An earlier version of this story’s headline incorrectly stated that the director of the UN’s food scarcity organization believes 2% of Elon Musk’s wealth could solve world hunger. He believes it could help solve world hunger.” To me, this implies Beasley backed from what he said / implied in the interview—but not from his original tweet.
My conjecture: maybe what we are seeing is a politician (Beasley is a member of the Republican party and was Governor of South Carolina) getting lost with numbers, mistaking something like the amount necessary to lift people beyond the poverty line (U$1,90) for what would be necessary to prevent (first) starvation and (second) death. Or maybe someone just did a regression using what WFP spends per person – and I’m actually surprised they could feed an additional person with only U$0,43 a day (= 6.6 bn / (365 * 42 mi)), and scale it up to 42mi. Either way, it’d not justify the bold (counterfactual) claim that people are “literally going to die” – though it’d justify the straightforward claims such as “we could feed up to additional 42 million people, or lift them from extreme poverty”. Even then, I’m quite surprised with that, and would like to see someone analyze their data.
However, I tend to disagree that this would be a peculiar opportunity for (most) EA orgs – unless one could do this without becoming one more of Moloch’s tools. I’m afraid this type of news driven by Twitter debate and suspicious analysis (like the Institute for Policy Studies and Americans for Tax Fairness published) is precisely what EA is usually trying to avoid.
I think the idea would not be to pile onto the billionare-bashing and try to nag Elon into donating (that would be too politicizing as you say, and we wouldn’t want to alienate Elon who is already fairly EA-aligned in his own unique way), but rather to publish a bunch of “well, actually...” type posts explaining how we think six billion dollars could most effectively be spent to reduce human suffering. Hopefully the effect would be to help raise the profile of EA while raising the sophistication / sanity level of the surrounding conversation at the same time.
I mostly agree with you, but I think that “raising the sophistication” here might be harder than most people think, and I strongly believe our current media environment (plus social networks) is not conducive to such sophistication.
Plus, I was intrigued by this sentence:
… Elon who is already fairly EA-aligned in his own unique way
I was wondering what made you say this, then I googled it up a bit, and decided to share some references, if anyone else ever needs to justify such a claim:
But notice we now apparently agree that Elon Musk is well aware of EA-thinking, so I’m not sure if there’s any additional value in getting Musk’s attention to EA—which makes me even more suspicious about what could be our benefit from stepping into this “6 bn” debate.
Btw, NYT (a little late for the fray) has called Musk’s debate with WFP an example of Trolling Philantrhopy. But the text is not as bad as the title.
And WFP has published a report describing how they would spend the $6.6bn. As I mentioned above, the goal is to save 42 mi people from hunger, not saving 42 mi—i.e., I don’t think all of them would die this year (also, some of the survivors will die next year even if assisted, so WFP just bought them another year). I’d really like to see a rough napkin CBA estimating how many lives (= aprox. 30 QALY) are saved by these programs.
Thanks for the post. First, I think it’s important to clarify that UN didn’t say anything: it was David Beasley, director of the World Food Programme—WFP (a branch of UN), who tweeted this “challenge” and later on was interviewed about it; second, his original tweet was about U$ 6.6 bn to prevent 42 million people from starving – only when interviewed he was more emphatic and said “they are literally going to die”. After the CNN interview spread, they changed their original piece, and now the website states that “An earlier version of this story’s headline incorrectly stated that the director of the UN’s food scarcity organization believes 2% of Elon Musk’s wealth could solve world hunger. He believes it could help solve world hunger.” To me, this implies Beasley backed from what he said / implied in the interview—but not from his original tweet.
My conjecture: maybe what we are seeing is a politician (Beasley is a member of the Republican party and was Governor of South Carolina) getting lost with numbers, mistaking something like the amount necessary to lift people beyond the poverty line (U$1,90) for what would be necessary to prevent (first) starvation and (second) death. Or maybe someone just did a regression using what WFP spends per person – and I’m actually surprised they could feed an additional person with only U$0,43 a day (= 6.6 bn / (365 * 42 mi)), and scale it up to 42mi. Either way, it’d not justify the bold (counterfactual) claim that people are “literally going to die” – though it’d justify the straightforward claims such as “we could feed up to additional 42 million people, or lift them from extreme poverty”. Even then, I’m quite surprised with that, and would like to see someone analyze their data.
However, I tend to disagree that this would be a peculiar opportunity for (most) EA orgs – unless one could do this without becoming one more of Moloch’s tools. I’m afraid this type of news driven by Twitter debate and suspicious analysis (like the Institute for Policy Studies and Americans for Tax Fairness published) is precisely what EA is usually trying to avoid.
I think the idea would not be to pile onto the billionare-bashing and try to nag Elon into donating (that would be too politicizing as you say, and we wouldn’t want to alienate Elon who is already fairly EA-aligned in his own unique way), but rather to publish a bunch of “well, actually...” type posts explaining how we think six billion dollars could most effectively be spent to reduce human suffering. Hopefully the effect would be to help raise the profile of EA while raising the sophistication / sanity level of the surrounding conversation at the same time.
I mostly agree with you, but I think that “raising the sophistication” here might be harder than most people think, and I strongly believe our current media environment (plus social networks) is not conducive to such sophistication.
Plus, I was intrigued by this sentence:
I was wondering what made you say this, then I googled it up a bit, and decided to share some references, if anyone else ever needs to justify such a claim:
Elon Musk To Address ‘Nerd Altruists’ At Google HQ
Dear Elon Musk: Here’s how you should donate your money
Why I Stan Elon Musk
But notice we now apparently agree that Elon Musk is well aware of EA-thinking, so I’m not sure if there’s any additional value in getting Musk’s attention to EA—which makes me even more suspicious about what could be our benefit from stepping into this “6 bn” debate.
Btw, NYT (a little late for the fray) has called Musk’s debate with WFP an example of Trolling Philantrhopy. But the text is not as bad as the title.
And WFP has published a report describing how they would spend the $6.6bn. As I mentioned above, the goal is to save 42 mi people from hunger, not saving 42 mi—i.e., I don’t think all of them would die this year (also, some of the survivors will die next year even if assisted, so WFP just bought them another year). I’d really like to see a rough napkin CBA estimating how many lives (= aprox. 30 QALY) are saved by these programs.